You’re meeting someone for coffee, lunch, or a drink. Each of you sits down and places your cell phone on the table so that you can monitor calls and messages. A suggestion, say to your companion, “Excuse me while I turn off my phone.” Then put your phone out of sight.

What a powerful message you send by this thoughtful action. In effect, you have communicated, “I want to spend the next hour giving you my undivided attention. For the time that we are together, there is nothing more important to me than what you are saying.”

We can all survive, for a short time, without obsessive surveillance for possible outside communication. If you must make an exception because there really is a pending emergency, (waiting for the results of a recent blood test, or your child is driving on her own for the first time), a nice way to handle this is, “I apologize, but I am going to keep my phone on only because I am waiting for a call from my doctor. Of course, I will ignore all other calls and texts.”

laura@realwomenwin.com #bereal